Rubin: Suspected thieves practically scream 'I did it!' as Fowling Warehouse gets its trailer back

Crime did not pay thunderously well for the two miscreants who stole Scott Brown’s trailer a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately for the Good Samaritan who bought and returned it, he got taken for a ride.

Since the Free Press played a small part in reuniting Brown and the trailer, and since the Samaritan has some useful tips for people who buy large used objects online, I thought I'd circle back around on what appear to be two exceptionally stupid criminals and why their careers may be hitting a speed bump.

“This was not some back-alley deal,” said the Samaritan, who asked that his name not be used because he has a day job and responsibilities and it’s all sort of embarrassing.

Rather, it was a sidewalk deal, in front of what appeared to be the seller’s home in Flint, where the likely co-thief used his real Facebook account with pictures of his family and took a $1,000 PayPal payment along with $1,050 in cash.

As for Brown, he’s delighted to have his 16-foot Stealth 1600 trailer back, even if the thieves tore out all the cleats and tiedowns and scratched the holy heck out of it trying to hide its identity — at the same time they left the VIN in plain view, and one of them signed an affidavit for the Samaritan declaring that the trailer was his to sell.

"Like I told you when it happened," Brown said, "these guys aren't that bright."

Brown co-owns the Fowling Warehouse in Ypsilanti, genially serving everyone in the Ypsi/Ann Arbor area who might want to enjoy refreshing beverages while knocking down bowling pins with footballs.

Until late October, he also had a black trailer, festooned with white vinyl Fowling Warehouse lettering and packed with five lanes, five footballs, 10 sets of pins, tents, banners, chairs and endless hours of merriment.

Then, at 5:22 on a Tuesday morning, two men backed a U-Haul truck into the bar's parking lot on Washtenaw Avenue. In five unhurried minutes, they severed a lock with bolt cutters, unchained the trailer, hitched it up and blithely drove away.

A deal, but not a steal

I was so taken with the brazenness of the theft that I wrote about it. The Samaritan — let's just call him Sam for short — found the column online after he'd tried to register his cool new trailer at a Secretary of State office and discovered it was scorching hot.

He called Brown last Monday, and by Tuesday morning the trailer was tucked away inside the Fowling Warehouse mother ship in Hamtramck, awaiting repairs and springtime.

Sam is a Detroiter in his mid-30s who works for a nonprofit and is chipping away at his student loans by finding bargain-priced items on Facebook Marketplace and reselling them on eBay. The trailer was intended to be front-and-center in his side business.

"The secondary market is fantastic," he said, particularly in Detroit, where things like gently used PCs and machine tools are rounding errors on rounding errors for large corporations that buy new gear.

He figures the planet appreciates it when he keeps things out of landfills, and on a personal level, "basically everything I own is secondhand. My house, tools, car, all my furniture."

Then again, his girlfriend told him as the trailer deal went into the ditch, "Some people buy things in stores, and then they're not stolen."

Sam had not been burned before, though he'd been lightly toasted: a $200 welder, purchased online from out of state, never showed up.

He's kicking himself over the 4-year-old trailer, though realistically, the alarm bells were more like gentle chimes.

At $2,000 for an item Brown purchased used in 2021 for $6,550, the trailer was "a good value, though not an astronomically good value."

The friendly seller affirmed in writing that he was the rightful owner, something Sam encourages all buyers to insist upon. His purported first name is in his email address. He was accompanied by an equally cheerful friend that Brown assumes was the other thief, and threw in a hitch and lock for $50.

He accepted PayPal, for heaven's sake, and Sam was so disarmed he sent what's known as a friends and family payment, rather than a buyer protection payment that costs the seller 3% but would have put Sam in line for a refund of his $1,000.

"Under the circumstances," Sam said, "I thought somebody would have to be a complete and total idiot to be fraudulently selling it to me."

He was probably right about that.

Clues and cluelessness

In fairness, Sam said, the seller and his buddy, gentlemen in their 50s, may have been offloading the trailer for the actual criminals, not knowing it was stolen. Were it clean, though, why involve a middleman?

Police will ultimately sort it out. They advised Sam to file charges, supply his abundant information, wait for a conviction and then go to small claims court to get his money back.

Brown is confident Sam was face-to-face with the thieves. In a surveillance video, the absconders' lack of nimbleness had him thinking they were older, and the general cluelessness of the sale reminded him of the original crime.

The vinyl lettering on the trailer was affixed with a hurricane-strength glue. Other identifiers included a dented left fender and a mysterious bullet hole in the rear door.

"They took a grinder to the letters on the left side," Brown said. "They tried to use a chemical compound on the right side, then switched to use a razor blade or something. On the back, they just gave up and painted it over."

That's a lot of effort, hours and supplies, and it came after renting a truck, driving from Flint to Ypsilanti, hiding the trailer, and risking felony arrest at every step — all for $2,000, split two ways.

Sam, for the record, did not ask for a reward and can’t imagine why he should. It’s the sellers, not the fowlers, who owe him money.

The only thing he asked is that Brown cooperate with the criminal investigation, the gateway to getting reimbursed.

Glad to, Brown said, and when it’s all over, he knows where they can get a drink.

Catch Neal Rubin doing a Facebook Live appearance at noon Tuesday for Bookstock, Michigan's largest charity used book and media sale. As honorary chair, he'll be interviewing Book Beat co-owner Cary Loren at his shop in Oak Park.

Reach Neal at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Stolen trailer returned to Fowling Warehouse as Samaritan gets stiffed